


Snag

by apparitionism



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F, what S4 and S5?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 12:21:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3650166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparitionism/pseuds/apparitionism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story of what appears to be a simple snag... that takes place in a neither-S4-nor-S5 world. Hauled over from Tumblr, with some extra whatnot added in!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snag

_Snag_. All it takes is a slight step, a tiny stumble, really, towards the wall, and Myka has snagged her sweater on a protruding nail. Or something. This makes her roll her eyes in frustration; she _likes_ this sweater, this sweater is _comfortable_ , and she has been trying to dress a bit more casually and comfortably lately, to be less buttoned-down, or buttoned-up, or maybe just less buttoned. So, more sweaters and soft shirts that have a bit of flow to them and pants that wouldn’t necessarily be at home as half of a suit. But the problem with sweaters is that they _catch_ on things. Oddly, she’d forgotten that. She’d tried to pull one over her head the other day, but she’d been wearing her glasses, and the whole thing had turned into a comedy of tangled errors. And now here she is _again_ , getting herself caught on something. If she’d been wearing a suit, this wouldn’t have happened.

But, the other reason: “I like you in this,” Helena has said, on more than one occasion, and that is really the end of the discussion, as far as Myka is concerned.

Which is why it doesn’t really make any sense to her, later, when they start arguing. Myka wants to hang a picture—why she’s come up with this idea, she’s not sure, but she _really_ wants to hang this picture, which is of a horse. The horse is very beautiful; it is in mid-jump, easily clearing some obstacle, and Myka would just really like to be able to look at it. Again, she’s not sure why, but it feels important. So she doesn’t want to deal with Helena asking her about it; all she wants is a nail to hang it from. And there are no nails to be found. Anywhere in the bed and breakfast, apparently, and so Helena tells her to come to bed, that they’ll buy a box of nails tomorrow if it’s so important, but for now it couldn’t possibly matter so much, could it? And Myka is mightily offended, and the argument becomes a circling drain of accusations of who finds whose issues more important, and who is expected to drop everything and attend to whose wishes, and even though none of these accusations really even comes close to correctly describing how they are with each other, still they make them, until Helena ends the “conversation” by saying that she thinks she’ll feel more comfortable sleeping on the sofa downstairs tonight.

And Myka lets her go. She is still smarting from what was said to her and what she said in return. She is so preoccupied with her thoughts about the exchanges, in fact, that she fails to notice an incursion: a small drone, no bigger than a dragonfly, makes its way through the crack that she’s opened her window. To cool the room down—no, to cool _herself_ down, because she can feel that her face is overheated, red with anger. And the worst part is, this is the worst part of a day that’s been progressively getting worse, because not only did she ruin her favorite sweater, but also she and Pete had completely failed to find the artifact they were supposed to be retrieving. Three days of looking, and they’d gotten to the point of dropping random things into static bags, but nothing, nothing, nothing. No sparks, not even the _possibility_ of a spark, and Myka had actually been _happy_ when Artie had yelled at her, via Farnsworth, “Fine! Why don’t you just come home already! I’m tired of wasting money on two hotel rooms!” So Pete had agreed to stay and try for at least one more day, and as for Myka, yes, this time she’d been happy to be coming home, ruined sweater in tow (and, she’d noticed, a small scratch on her torso, which also would never have happened in a suit), because these days she got to come home to Helena, or vice versa, and when they went on retrievals together, they got to come home _together_ , and that was the best of all.

She puts her hands on her hips, readying herself to march downstairs and tell Helena off again; then she winces, because she’s managed to rest her fingers right on that scratch and, apparently, tear it open again. She raises her eyes to the heavens and wonders whether the bed and breakfast is as band-aid deficient as it is nail-deficient. She decides it probably is. She decides to ignore the scratch; any pain that she feels will just serve as her punishment, or her martyrdom. She hasn’t figured out yet who’s at fault for the argument, she or Helena.

The dragonfly-drone buzzes imperceptibly through the room and out the door that Helena has left open—just a crack, but certainly if she had still been in the room, the door would have been closed, for both she and Myka guard their privacy carefully. They have to; to leave a door open in this establishment means that someone will soon walk through it uninvited, “just to say hi,” or to offer a potato chip or pretzel or Call of Duty session. Or, most mortifyingly, with an assignment folder in hand, and Myka refuses to be caught thisclose to being in flagrante like that again, particularly by Artie. Although that did serve the purpose of getting the situation out into the open, so to speak, so that everyone was, as Pete later put it, _up to speed_. Myka would have preferred the rest of them all poking along, not at all _up to speed_ , but it had happened, and she had tried to take it with good humor.

Myka sighs and peeks out into the hall, vainly hoping that Helena has not, in fact, gone downstairs, or, if she did go, has not decided to stay there. She notes that Claudia’s door is open; she hears the tick-tack of the keys on her keyboard. So, not playing video games with Steve and/or Pete. She decides to do that “say hi” thing; she can get too focused on Helena, she knows, and Claudia needs attention too.

“Oh man,” Claudia says to her when she sticks her head in, “what are you guys fighting about this time?”

“What makes you think we’re fighting?” Myka asks.

“First, I heard H.G. scram out of your room, and I haven’t heard her come back upstairs. That means quality time on the couch. And second, you don’t tend to come in here during prime gaming time unless H.G.’s either gone or having that aforementioned quality time.”

“So I’m interrupting prime gaming time?”

“No. Nothing’s really going on tonight. Jinksy had a date, Pete hates playing over the Internet, and as far as I can tell, everyone else who’s online is just pathetic. You wanna? I mean, I know it’s not really your thing, but it could take your mind off… well, anything you might need your mind taken off of. If you needed that, I mean.”

“That’s okay. I appreciate the offer, but you were obviously doing _something_ when I came in here, so I’ll just leave you to it.”

“This? God, no, don’t leave me to it. It’s _work_. I don’t want to be working, but I couldn’t find anything else to do.”

“Aren’t you not supposed to be working from this computer anymore? Wasn’t there some concern about security?” Myka doesn’t mean to sound stern, she really doesn’t, but it just seems to come so naturally to her. Pete swears that someday he’ll wear her down and she’ll quit being such a schoolmarm about everything. That day doesn’t seem to have come yet. “Sorry,” she says to Claudia. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Well,” Claudia says, “there _was_ a concern about security, but I’ve got that pretty much locked down. At this point, anybody who wanted to figure out what I’m doing from here would basically have to be standing right behind me, watching me do it, because there’s no way they’re getting in through my pipeline here. And since there’s nobody standing right behind me, other than you, I think I’m good.”

She does not notice, nor does Myka, that the dragonfly-drone is in fact hovering directly behind them.

“What if I’m not me?” Myka asks. Apparently, this is her day to be contrary on all fronts.

“Like with the thimble or something, you mean? Hey, maybe that’s why you had the fight with H.G.: you aren’t actually you, and she figured something was off, and now she’s downstairs looking for something to bludgeon you with so you don’t take over the Warehouse.” Claudia snickers. “Except for I’m pretty sure it’s you, because you’re the only one who gets that tone when I’m doing something you think I shouldn’t be doing. I mean, if this isn’t Myka, then kudos to you, unidentified bad guy, for getting that so down that I couldn’t tell the difference.”

“I’m me,” Myka snaps. She wonders why everyone seems to be going out of their way to be irritating today. “I’m me, and we had the fight because… because… I don’t know why we had the fight.”

“Aw, poor Myka,” Claudia says, but she also giggles, which takes the sting out.

Myka smiles, just a little, and says, “Yeah, poor me. I’m having a day, I tell you. I should go apologize to Helena, because I’m sure the fight _was_ my fault. I can’t get anything right today.” She shakes her head, and Claudia makes a sad wah-wah noise at her, then grins.

Unbeknownst to both of them, the drone hums discreetly out of the room. It continues to hum, not quite enough to be heard, as it goes back to Myka and Helena’s room and then out the window it came in. It flies for quite a length of time, long enough for Myka to go downstairs and say sheepishly to Helena, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

“You did, however, mean what you said,” Helena points out. “I meant what I said as well, I believe.”

“Okay,” Myka agrees, “we both meant it. Which I guess means we have some things to work on, don’t we?”

“Mm, perhaps,” Helena says. “Among those things may be that we are both a bit quick to take offense.”

“Things might escalate a little faster than they need to,” Myka says. “Claudia actually asked me what we were fighting about _this time_. As if all we ever do is fight.”

“More lately, then at first?” Helena offers.

“Yeah. I’ve noticed that, too. Which means... do you think we both feel safer? Less like if we step wrong, the other person will disappear? Which is actually good?” She’s been reluctant to put this into words, but she’s felt it to be true. She looks worriedly at Helena; will she feel the same?

Helena appears to indeed feel the same way, for she crosses the room—they have been standing almost as far away from each other as they possibly could, without having to speak unreasonably loudly—and kisses Myka. “Which is, actually, better than good,” Helena says when they break apart.

They go upstairs together.

They go upstairs together, and suddenly, everything is fine, everything is in fact perfect, and Myka is saying “We haven’t touched each other in three days,” and Helena is saying, “Then why did we fight, why didn’t we just do this,” and Myka says back “So that this would be like this?” because they are more aggressive when they are fighting, or have fought, and sometimes aggressive is what they both want and need. Sweet and slow is sweet and slow, and it is overwhelming in its way, but sometimes rough and angry is better, when Myka says “are you sorry for what you did” and Helena says “no not at all,” and then they reverse, because no one is sorry, and and now it is only for the excuse, not that they truly need the excuse, but something delectable lives in the space of frustration that lies between anger and love, and getting to that space is a pleasure all its own.

The drone arrives at its destination and downloads the images it has recorded. These images are perused by its owner, who finds them very interesting indeed. This individual begins entering code into a computer.

Myka awakens to the sound of her Farnsworth blaring. She flings her free arm at the table on her side of the bed, hoping to silence the thing before Helena stirs—but it’s too late, because now Helena’s raising her head, then putting it back down again, saying, “That one’s yours, yes.” Myka’s pretty sure Helena hasn’t actually woken up at any point during this. A quick glance at the clock tells her that they haven’t been asleep very long at all, and when Helena’s really asleep, it takes an entire brass band _and_ a full nine wielding baseball bats to bring her to actual consciousness.

So it’s the middle of the night. Dreading what’s about to happen, Myka opens the Farnsworth. The first thing she sees is Artie looking off to the side; the first thing she hears is Artie saying “oh my god oh my god.” This gets her full attention. “Artie!” she says, trying to stay calm, “what is happening?!”

“We’re under attack!” he says. “Claudia’s on her way over here now, I thought it was just an anomaly of some sort, but she says we’re being hacked within an inch of our lives!”

“I _knew_ it!” Myka says softly. “I _knew_ she shouldn’t have been working in her room.”

“Stop muttering and get over here! Bring H.G.; we have to stop this!”

“What are the two of us going to do about a hack?” Myka asks. She’s not trying to be difficult, but this really isn’t her area of expertise. And as for Helena, she’s just now getting up to speed on computer technology. Claudia keeps saying “when she gets it, watch out,” as if there’s going to be some kind of database explosion—which, when Myka thinks about it, she realizes there might be, but it hasn’t come yet.

“Well, we’re not being hacked for the _fun of it_!” Artie yells.

“Okay, okay,” Myka says, instead of what she wants to say, which is something about how that’s exactly why a lot of hackers do their hacking, if Claudia’s to be believed. “We’re coming.” She closes the Farnsworth and starts nudging Helena. “Wake up,” she says, even though she knows perfectly well it won’t have any effect. In fact, it has a small effect: Helena turns over and starts snoring. Myka sighs. She gets up, crosses the room, and does the one thing that she knows will do the trick; she hates it, but turning on the bright overhead light always makes Helena sit up and blink.

Which she does. “What?” she demands. “What could possibly be so important that you resort to this?”

“Somebody’s trying to get into the Warehouse computers. Or they already did—I don’t know, but Artie wants us over there.”

“What, exactly, would he like us to do about that?” Helena asks.

Myka doesn’t say that she had the same thought; no, that wouldn’t do at all. Instead, she says, “I think he thinks it’s a prelude to something else. It’s not like we have a choice, anyway.”

“I suppose not,” Helena grumps.

Myka stretches a bit, just to get the kinks out of her back. She intends to hurry to dress, but Helena’s hands stop her. “Hey,” Myka says, “I wish we had time for that, but I don’t think—”

“No, no,” Helena says, “I’m not—well, I certainly _would_ , but—what happened to you?”

“Happened to me? What are you talking about?”

“Here, on your side. You have a nasty scrape, almost a gash.” Helena touches the scratch, and Myka hisses at the contact. “That seems quite serious.”

“It’s just a scratch,” Myka says, even though the pain now radiating from it suggests something dramatically more than that. “I got it in that house where Pete and I went to look for the artifact. Just a stumble.”

“A stumble into what? A straight razor?”

“No, a nail, I think, something that was sticking out from the wall. It’s probably getting infected. I’ll deal with it after this computer hack thing—I probably need a tetanus shot.”

Helena’s eyebrows rise. “Tetanus?” she says, with a tone that sounds suspiciously close to panic, even though she does an admirable job of keeping her face mostly composed.

“It’s no big deal,” Myka assures her. “Tetanus, I mean. Well, it probably is a big deal, but you can get a shot for it now. I doubt it’s that, but even if it is, I’ll be fine. Like I said, I probably just managed to get it infected. Stop fussing.” She bats ineffectually at Helena, who has knelt at her side and is peering at the scrape.

“I will,” Helena says, “if you in turn will _promise_ to take some action once this matter is resolved.”

“I promise,” Myka says. She means it. The scratch really does hurt, and she has no interest in getting actually sick from some stupid accident. “Running into that nail—it ruined my brown sweater, too. The one you like.”

“I am developing a stern dislike of this nail in that house in… where was it again?”

“Philadelphia,” Myka says. “And I used to _like_ Philadelphia. Some crazy artifacts, of course, because everything there’s historical, but it’s so _interestingly_ historical.”

“You sound,” Helena says fondly, as she begins pulling on her own clothing, “just as your partner did when we had to go to that comic book convention. The one that was so much more focused on television programs and motion pictures than on comic books.”

“ComicCon. Right. Well, there you have it, the difference between me and Pete in a nutshell.”

At the Warehouse, they find Claudia frantically clicking and typing, with Artie leaning over her shoulder and yelling at her. Claudia flings back at him, “I might be able to get something done if you would just SHUT UP!” and Artie flings right back, “I might be able to keep intruders out if you would stop IGNORING MY ORDERS!” And Myka has to admit, privately, that he has something like a point.

Pete picks that moment to call Myka’s Farnsworth. “I’m getting a really bad vibe,” he says by way of greeting. “Can you get Claudia to look for pings around here? I think something’s happening.”

“Something’s kind of happening here, too,” Myka tells him.

Claudia, from behind Myka, grabs the Farnsworth and yells into it, “A little busy here, Petemeister! Can’t help you out!”

“What was that on Myka?” Pete asks. “Is she bleeding? What’s going on?”

Myka looks down at her shirt—and there’s a widening circle of blood. She just looks at it, dumbfounded. Helena gasps and says, “I _knew_ it was serious!”

Pete says, and Myka can hear the escalating fear, “Mykes, what’s the matter? You look like you got shot!”

“I didn’t get shot!” Myka says. “For pity’s sake, I scratched myself on a nail in Benjamin Franklin’s printshop, Pete, when we were there yesterday.”

“I have an idea,” Pete says. He disappears.

“He’s not suggesting… well, obviously he _is_ suggesting,” Helena says.

“Suggesting what?” Myka asks.

“That the nail is the artifact. Or rather _an_ artifact. As you pointed out, Philadelphia is home to, and I quote, ‘some crazy artifacts, because everything there’s historical.’”

Myka says, “I guess it isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine that something that _seems_ innocuous isn’t, particularly in Benjamin Franklin’s print shop.” She’s beginning to feel a little lightheaded; is her blood actually _dripping_ down her side? She raises the hem of her shirt, just to see what the situation is, and after that, she feels a _lot_ lightheaded. She sits down on Artie’s sofa and starts to bleed on it.

Helena grabs the closest pillow and holds it against Myka’s side in what feels to Myka like a vain attempt to stanch the flow. “Artie,” she says, almost too quietly. “Claudia. Myka needs help, and she _must_ take precedence.”

Claudia glances back at them, and her eyes widen. “My god, she’s all white. Artie, I’ll handle this! Figure something out to help Myka!”

When Artie finally turns around and gets a good look, _he_ almost passes out—or seems to, anyway; he staggers backwards and whispers, “What did you say happened to you?”

Myka says, with difficulty—her vision’s starting to get a little hazy—“I scratched myself. On a nail. I think.”

“You scratched yourself on a nail,” Artie repeats. “On a nail. On a nail.”

“Yes,” Helena snaps, clearly ready to strangle him. “On a nail. Which couldn’t matter less, at the moment, as we must stop the bleeding _now_.”

Pete, with impeccable timing, calls again. “Hey!” he shouts. “Mykes, where were you? When it happened, I mean, where in the shop?”

“Pete,” Myka says drowsily. She isn’t in pain anymore. She’s just so, so tired, and she knows that if she could just close her eyes for a little while, she’d feel so much better.

“Helena, wake her up!” Pete shouts, and this gets Myka’s attention, albeit briefly. Pete _never_ calls Helena “Helena”; he always calls her “H.G.,” unless he’s really upset with her or really happy with her, and why would Pete be happy with Helena right now? He’s not even there, is he?

“MYKA!” Helena shouts at her.

“I’m awake,” Myka pouts, but softly.

“Tell us where you were when you scratched yourself,” Helena says. “Tell us now!”

“Oh my god,” Claudia says. “This is so not good… Artie, the system’s going to crash, and whoever this is, they’re going to be able to waltz in here, in maybe ten… nine….”

An alarm starts blaring, somewhere far away from where Myka’s drifting.

“MYKA!” Helena shouts again, this time really just unnecessarily close to her ear. “Where were you?”

“By the sideboard,” Myka says. She wonders why no one will let her go to sleep. “It would look so pretty in the dining room here. Leena would love it. Would have loved it. She would have loved it.” And with that, she lets go. Helena will just have to be the one to set the alarm clock this time, even though that’s usually Myka’s job, if only because she’s conscientious and Helena… is a lot of things, but she doesn’t like the alarm, so every time Myka leaves it up to her, she “forgets” to set it, and they’re late and sometimes don’t even get to have breakfast, which is Myka’s favorite meal of the day, _not_ because it’s the most important, even though it is, but because you can have oatmeal and eggs and healthy things and nobody thinks you’re weird, not even the sexy English lady who always puts sugar in your tea even though you tell her over and over again not to do that…..

Myka comes back to herself as she hears something like a muted BANG. She then hears Pete saying, through the Farnsworth, “Did it work?” and everyone around her says some combination of “yes” and “thank god.” Helena is pawing at Myka’s side, which is now blood-free, and she is silently crying. No one but Myka would be able to tell. Myka brings a hand to Helena’s cheek and says, “I’m okay. Are you okay?”

Helena shakes her head no, then forces out, “Of course. I’m quite all right. Now that the artifact has been neutralized.”

Myka moves her hand away and places a swift kiss in its place. She stands up, just to make sure she actually can, and turns to Artie and Claudia. “What exactly happened? How long was I out?”

Claudia says, “Barely a minute, but I really thought it was all over, and not just for you. Then Pete got that nail, and thank god that’s what it was. Although I have to say I don’t exactly get why bagging the nail that was giving you all that trouble also fixed the computers.”

“It did?” Myka says. She’s perplexed, but then again it isn’t as if she understood what was going on with the computers to begin with.

“I’ve got it!” Artie exclaims. “It’s the horseshoe nail.”

“Pardon?” Helena says. She’s still sitting on the couch, running her hand carefully over where Myka’s blood had soaked the fabric. “What horseshoe nail is that?” She pulls on Myka’s hand, pulls her to sit down again. Puts her hand on Myka’s side, now, where there was so much blood. Myka can feel her fingers tremble.

Artie says, “The one in the nursery rhyme, or proverb, or whatever you want to call it: for want of a nail, the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe, the horse was lost, for want of a horse, et cetera.”

Myka catches Helena’s wandering, nervous hands in hers. Reassuring her. “And all for the want of a horseshoe nail,” she ends it.

END


End file.
